1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image reading device in which a light beam of red, green or blue is radiated onto a color image recorded in a film, for example, so that the color image is read.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known an image reading device in which a film is intermittently moved along a sub-scanning direction perpendicular to a main-scanning direction, which is a longitudinal direction of a line sensor, so that red (R) pixel data, green (G) pixel data and blue (B) pixel data are read at every single line of image pixels included in a color image recorded in the film. Namely, at every reading operation of the single line of image pixels, the film is moved by a predetermined amount, by a moving mechanism, and a light beam of R, G or B is selectively radiated onto the film while the film is stopped, so that R, G and B pixel data are sensed by the line sensor.
During the intermittent movement, immediately after the stopping operation of the moving mechanism, an oscillation occurs due to a reason related to the structure of the moving mechanism. If the reading operation by the line sensor is started before the oscillation is fully damped, the pixel data cannot be sensed with a high accuracy, and thus, the quality of the reproduced image would be low. Therefore, in a conventional device, the reading operation is started after the oscillation is fully damped, which causes a protracted reading operation time.